Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Goodbye Eric Holder

By Alan
Caruba

In a
nation where there is a scarcity of good news, hearing Eric Holder give a
farewell speech upon his announcement that he will be leaving as the Attorney
General was surely welcome in some circles. I was never a fan of his because he
was in my opinion always more of a politician than someone with the
responsibility to enforce the laws of the nation.

I first
took notice of Holder when, in the pre-dawn hours of April 22, 2000, as the
deputy attorney general serving under Janet Reno, he oversaw the seizure of
Elian Gonzalez, a seven-year-old whose mother had died in an effort to escape
Cuba and find sanctuary in the United States. Holder was doing what he had to
do after a court ruled that Gonzalez be returned to his father in Cuba, but I
thought then and still do that Gonzalez should have been allowed to remain with
his U.S. relatives.

When
Barack Obama became President, he selected Holder as his Attorney General. Both
had made history being the first blacks to hold either job. Within three weeks
or so, Holder was saying that Americans were “cowards” for not addressing
issues of race in America. That told me all I needed to know about him.
Whatever would follow would frequently be judged on the basis of race, not justice.
I wouldn’t want a white attorney general to act in that fashion, but a black
one nursing feelings of victimization despite his personal achievements did not
bode well.

I have not
been alone in my misgivings. On news of Holder’s announcement, The Heartland Institute, a free market think tank, called on some of its advisors for their
opinions.

Ronald D. Rotunda, the Doy & Dee Henley
Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at Chapman University, had
his own memories of Holder:

“Mr. Holder is leaving the office, but he cannot
so easily leave the controversies that have surrounded his tenure, including: the
scandal surrounding the IRS, the missing emails, and his role in investigating
the scandal; the ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal, which made him the first cabinet
member in U.S. history that Congress held in contempt; his decision to drop a
prosecution against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation, after
the Department of Justice successfully secured an injunction; and the
unprecedented decision, which Holder personally approved, to subpoena,
monitor, and issue a search warrant involving James Rosen, a Fox News Reporter”

“Holder will leave the office, but is unlikely
to leave the national stage because these controversies remain,” said Prof.
Rotunda.

“The Association of American Physicians and
Surgeons first got to know Eric Holder when he represented the government in
our lawsuit about the illegal operations of the Clinton Task Force on Health
Care Reform. The pattern then was stonewalling and obfuscation. Even when task
force members finally turned over some documents on court order, many of the
floppy disks were blank. Holder declined to prosecute Ira Magaziner, head of
the Task Force Working Group, for perjury.”

‘It seems,” said Dr. Orient, “that some
government officials never learn that the cover-up can be worse than the
underlying conduct,'’ Judge Lamberth added. ‘Most shocking to this court, and
deeply disappointing, is that the Department of Justice would participate in
such conduct... This type of conduct is reprehensible, and the government must
be held accountable for it…The pattern has only worsened with Holder as the
highest law enforcement officer in the land. Who will ever hold him and the
White House accountable?”

“Eric Holder's resignation represents an
opportunity for the President to appoint an Attorney General willing to end
what some have seen as a witch-hunt against American banks. Under Holder, the
Department of Justice shook down Bank of America for billions of dollars, as
punishment the bank's alleged crime of complying with the Community Reinvestment
Act of 1977 and lending money to individuals unable to repay. The CRA mandated
that banks must make bad loans, the banks complied with the bad policy, but the
bank is not at fault for the results of that bad policy.”

“Hopefully, said Hathaway, “whomever replaces
Holder as ‘top cop’ will understand how causality works, and end the practice
of shaking down the finance industry as punishment for following Washington
DC's orders.”

Holder’s instincts as Attorney General generated
a huge public outcry when he decided to try the September 11 plotters in a New
York courthouse within walking distance of the destroyed Twin Towers of the
World Trade Center. Lawmakers, New York City officials, and some of the
victim’s families thought that was a very bad idea and Holder reversed the
decision and sent the cases to military court. 9/11 was clearly an act of war,
but neither the President, nor Holder saw it that way.

Holder made a bit of history when he refused to
defend a law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. He made more
history when, refusing to hand over documents regarding Fast and Furious, a
scandal involving gun trafficking to Mexican drug cartels, Congress voted to
hold him in contempt, the first time an attorney general had been censured in
that way. Holder, however, held onto his job because the President had thrown a
cloak of “executive privilege” over the scandal, stonewalling Congress.

To be
fair, Holder has been lauded for policies that were applauded for reducing
crime during his tenure in office and urging a revision to sentences that did
not reflect the crimes, reducing the nation’s prison population in the process.

In the
end, though, it seems like everything was about race for him and the President.
Holder inserted himself into the Ferguson, Missouri, shooting of a black youth
by a white police officer and, while the facts are still being investigated,
the likelihood is that it was justifiable self-defense. And the President,
speaking at the United Nations last week also mentioned Ferguson as an example
of America’s racial bias. What happened in Ferguson was about law enforcement
and justice, but neither saw it in that fashion.

What
America needs now for the remainder of Obama’s term in office is a colorblind
Attorney General.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.